Hello. I want to use aircrack to crack my own wireless network (wpa-psk).
The problem I have is that when I put my atheros card in monitor mode, it does not capture any packets.

The output of the lspci command is:
My is card is an Airlink 101 superG with chipset awlh4130.
I downloaded madwifi tools using apt-get install and then aircrack from synaptics.
When I put my card back in managed mode, it detects my AP`s SSID, so in monitor mode it should at least detect it too. The output of iwconfig command in managed mode is:
Any help will be greatly appreciated.

What distro do you use and what's the output of iwconfig ath0 mode monitor

I am using ubuntu 8.04 with all the updates, using kernel version 2.6.24-22-generic. There is no output for that command.

That command will only put the wireless interface in monitor mode, there will only be output if something is not working.
Although you did not mention, I hope you realize you'll only capture packets from a WPA secure AP when a computer connects wireless to that AP. Packets after the handshake mean nothing to airdump and won't be captured as the encrypted passphrase is only found in packets during the authorization handshake.
You need to deauth a wireless connected computer or try capturing while connecting wireless with another computer.
If I remember correctly, the encrypted passphrase will only be found in two packets.

Have you cruised the aircrack-ng forums to see what you all have to do? there are many tutorials there for different wireless devices.

I was just looking at my notes, haven't played with this in over a year.
I usually have to bring the wireless interface up after changing it to monitor mode with command similar to: ifconfig ath0 up

Thanks, even with ifconfig ath0 up it didnt work.
I had to download the linux headers and the essentials and then the madwifi driver. Then I compiled it. I was able to put my card in monitor mode this way with:
wlanconfig ath0 destroy
wlanconfig ath0 create wlandev wifi0 wlanmode monitor
ifconfig ath0 up

Then for monitoring:
airodump-ng ath0

But I have another problem, please look at my last thread if you want to help me.

Yes, you are right. As you say, when trying to hack a wpa-psk network I have to deauth a wireless connected computer and then capture the handshake. Then I have to use a program to use brute force, because in wpa it doesnt matter how many ivs packets I capture because, unlike wep, wpa is not vulnerable to a statistical attack and can only be hacked using brute force ( as far as I know ).

I found a very good tutorial that shows how to a attack a wpa with mac filtering. But since Im learning I decided to change my wpa for wep, remove the mac filtering and then hack it ( I did that yesterday ). But now I have a problem. When I put my card in monitor mode, and then try to change the channel of an interface it doesnt change to the requested channel, but changes to a random channel. ( I could hack my own ap yesterday because I had good look and my ath0 changed randomly to the channel that I needed )

So when I try to use aireplay-ng to to associate my interface to the ap, it shows the following error:
the ap is in channel x but ath0 is in channel y.
when I use this command
iwconfig ath0 channel x
It changes to a random channel.

Im using the following commands:
I also tried
and:
None of them worked, any ideas?

Hello I found how to solve my problem. I just downloaded the linux headers and compiled the madwifi driver ( since the was I as using was the deafult driver that ubuntu has ). I did everything right and hacked my own network.